If you’ve ever deleted a treasured photo of your wedding day or a family day out by mistake, you’re not alone. Many of us have accidentally thrashed an important digital file and then scramble helplessly to recover it. After all, losing your photos can be a distressing situation because these digital files are not just that – they hold beautiful memories that you want to keep for a lifetime.

Well, fret not. It is almost impossible to wipe out a file from your computer. When you press "Delete", you’re actually not doing anything to the file itself. It disappears from your line of sight but it remains on your hard disk! So even if you’re not a technology expert, there are ways to get those digital files back without tearing your hair out. Relive those sentimental moments with these data recovery tips.

Do these:

• Stop using the computer as soon you realised that you’ve accidentally thrashed a treasured digital photo. This ensures that no new data is created or written over your last action, as well as lowers the risk of engaging in disk-swap activity.

• If you suspect that your hard disk has crashed, don’t panic. We don’t advise that you keep switching your computer on and off either. In fact, it’s crucial that the system remains shut down. Forget about going through the shutdown procedure in the event of a crash – just pull the plug out from the wall. Believe it or not, this will actually decrease the risk of any permanent data loss.

• If the crash is not due to a physical damage, consider going DIY instead of consulting a data recovery service. Generally, DIY data recovery is a good idea since it saves you money from going to professionals. You can also do it from the comforts of your own home. So if you’re facing a situation like a logical file system error when there is file system corruption or data deletion, a software recovery tool will be suitable.

• Use another computer to find and download data recovery software. Then, save this recovery tool into a flash drive and run it directly from there.

• We recommend that you try ADRC Data Recover Software. It’s absolutely free and doesn’t require any installation. Designed with a simple graphic user interface (GUI) that even the most novice of users can adapt to, the software is able to carry out critical recovery functions with minimum complexity to recover any deleted files on a FAT or NTFS file system. It’s packed with a number of functions not commonly found in similar class of freeware, including backup of disk to image file, restoration of saved image file to disk and OS independent disk-to-disk clone. For disk suffering from bad sectors, the software could intelligently optimise the copy process so maximum data will be copied out before the disk fails completely.

Step-by-step guide to using ADRC Data Recovery Software

1. Download the ADRC Data Recovery Software at http://www.adrc.com/software/data_recovery_tools to a separate hard disk (that is not the problem disk or partition). We recommend mounting the problem drive as a secondary slave drive or USB.

2. Launch ADRC Data Recovery Tools.

3. Select the drive letter of the data media.

4. Click search to scan the data media for deleted files.

5. After the scan is completed, select the file you wish to recover and click on the "Undelete Files" button.

6. Ensure that the data drive selected to save the recovered file is not in the same location as where the file was deleted. It is safer that the recovered file is saved in another directory such as your external hard disk or flash drive.

For advanced users who are more comfortable with DIY data recovery programmes, you may even use ADRC Data Recovery Software to repair your boot sector. Despite its comprehensive features, the size of this software is only 44.4KB, making it one of the smallest but features rich data recovery freeware available.

Good luck!